Love is Not A Victory March
by uccella
Summary: The ZAFT war trials of Yzak and Dearka, in the aftermath of SEED and before Destiny begins.


_Yzak's third person POV. This was essentially inspired by a scene in (ep. 11?) of GSeed Destiny where Athrun and co. visit the graves of the other young redcoats. Yzak mentions something about he and Dearka being dead if it hadn't been for Gilbert Dullindal interfering, giving the impression that the two of them were or would have been on trial for war crimes at the end of the Bloody Valentine War. Quite poignantly, Yzak flashes back to the civilian life vessel he shot down in an early episode of Seed, believing it was military. This is my take on what may have happened between Seed and Destiny during those trials._

* * *

(prologue): motion sickness

_The devil's own luck, _he remembers thinking, as they are picked up by the Laurasia-class cruiser.

He remembers floating in space – Phase Shift Armour long since dead, Assault Shroud in pieces around him, and Buster, gripping the other end of the plasma cannon that Duel holds in its alloy arms. The weapon is the only thing keeping them from drifting apart, engineless, through space. It seems as if there is only half of the other gundam left, but the cockpit is intact, he sees – and that is all that matters.

The afterglow of the explosion that ripped through Genesis seems to permeate the space around them. The _Vesalius _is gone. The signal from Justice went out with the lights of the massive weapon it destroyed, with Providence's last known location in its line of fire. He registers the information without connecting the dots.

The war is over, and all he can think of is _where are we going to dock?_

A female voice is broadcasting over all available channels. He tries to place her – a Council member, a vague face and unremarkable name. Not Chairman Zala. Not his mother.

"…_call for a ceasefire and…"_

When had ceasefire last been a word in his vocabulary? Or in that of Zala's faction? A ceasefire meant a Moderate in the Council, and a Moderate meant an internal coup.

_Mother, _he wonders momentarily, _what side were you on, in the end?_

He watches a piece of Genesis drift dangerously close to their position. He can still move Duel's appendages, but the machine giant has no propulsion. Miles away – mere moments in space – retreat flares illuminate the blackness like a colourful horizon line. He recognizes ZAFT flares among them, but also OMNI's lights, mobile suits and warships alike. He pulls Buster in closer, searching his control board for the flares he knows are kept in Duel's upper torso. How ironic, he thinks briefly as he flips the nondescript switch. It seems both ZAFT and the Earth Alliance have run out of things to kill each other with.

That is when he begins to connect the dots.

_What side was I on, in the end?_

They could have been picked up by the Eternal, or the Kusanagi – they fought alongside that renegade fleet, didn't they? Even the Archangel – _how many times did we fail to bring them down only to be saved by them? _he wonders bitterly, even as the ZAFT cruiser emerges from the debris.

"No." Dearka's voice, crackling over broken comms. "Christ, no."

_Better to die in war, _Le Creuset had told them once. Yzak had thought it a stupid thing to say.

_Why? _Dearka had asked.

Their commander had smiled in that unsettling way he always did – without his eyes.

_Because no one digs up a dead soldier and puts him on trial for war crimes._

* * *

_(day v): hang side by side_

"Jule, Yzak. Identification J-Y-Z-nine-six-four-seven-one-five-five, Martius One, Red."

In the dim light, someone shuffles papers.

"Please state your last military posting."

_To whom? _he wants to demand. It seems as if the only light in the vast room is hanging directly above him, the bulb naked and harsh, while the dozens of faces seated around him recede into darkness.

"ARM/a-1564 _Vesalius _destroyer_. _Le Creuset Team."

A wave of hushed murmurs. They already knew this, of course.

"Please state the last mobile weapon under your operation."

He feels his jaw clench.

"GAT-X102 Duel."

"Please state your last mission objective."

_To not let the world go to hell. _

"Lieutenant Jule."

_Lieutenant? _What the fuck is this, the Academy? He is a red coat.

_Was. _Of course.

"Engage hostiles attempting to penetrate ZAFT military space. Prevent civilian and military casualties."

"And would you consider this mission to have been a success?"

A new voice, drawling and haughty – someone's just been promoted, he thinks cynically – but without the sort of sharp, deadly intelligence of Chairman Zala or the forceful precision of his mother. Some other Council member, then – he squints a little, but the blinding light above him is so harsh is obscures the figures around him even more. He wants to lift a hand to his eyes to shield himself from the glare but doesn't dare move, lest they charge him as a criminal for that, too. _At least they've put the guns away, _he thinks, remembering the welcoming party of greencoats with semi-automatics waiting for he and Dearka to emerge from their cockpits in the Laurasia ship's hangar.

_Dearka. _His last memory of the blond pilot is his emergence from Buster – bleeding, trying to haul himself out of the cockpit while keeping both arms raised in a show of surrender – before being led at gunpoint through the opposite end of the hangar. That had been five days ago. He tries to recall his procedural training.

Did they execute defectors without a trial?

_Away-without-leave _was the charge they arrested him under, though they did not detain him like Dearka. Battlefield desertion – _I didn't desert the fucking battlefield_, he flares indignantly_ -_ did not usually end in court-marshalling. Yet here he was, on trial for whatever crimes they may have decided he committed over the course of the Bloody Valentine War.

_Any person found guilty of desertion or attempt to desert shall be punished, if the offense is committed in time of war, by death or such other punishment. _The textbook seems to read itself in his head. What _such other punishment _was, he can't remember.

"Lieutenant Jule."

The sneering voice again.

"I don't know," he answers contemptuously, "you tell me. The war is over, isn't it?"

Another hushed murmur. Someone somewhere hits a block of wood – _how old-fashioned – _and silence resumes. He doesn't need to see every face to know that this is a procession of old men who spent the war safely behind desks bringing judgement down upon the children they themselves enlisted.

Faintly, he makes out more rows of people, shuffling in the dark from where the voices come, but which ones are personnel and which are Council members he cannot tell. Instinctively he searches again for his mother in the crowd, though he is knows she isn't here. On his third day in holding, he heard of the coup. She is here, somewhere – but in a cell between alloy walls rather than at the Council's table.

He knows the layout of the room, if only vaguely – he's been through enough ZAFT military facilities before, seen from behind his mother's shadow the stark spaces where decisions are made that change the course of human history. Such rooms are like cathedrals, he's always found. Towering vaulted ceilings rise so high they fade into darkness, and below them the small, insignificant seats and surfaces are occupied as though the business conducted below is directly beneath the vastness of space. He wonders if such design was planned – an echoing chamber of empty architecture to perhaps enforce the gravitas of human decision, and their essential insignificance in the swallowing emptiness of space. That the colonies should be designed as such precisely synchronised imitations of nature but these chambers as bleak reminders of their distance from Earth must be purposeful. Coordinators have always had a flare for the starkly dramatic, he muses. Perhaps more a theatre hall than a cathedral, then.

"Your file cites certain instances, Lieutenant Jule," the languorous voice continues, "of notable concern towards your..." A purposeful pause. "Psychological stability."

_Ah, here it comes. _He feels his scar itch.

"Listed are numerous situations in which your commanding officers felt you acted on impulse rather than tactical knowledge." Another mocking pause. "This includes reckless endangerment of your mobile armour, your fellow officers and superiors, and your flagship; direct disobedience of orders given by a commanding officer; and the unprovoked sinking of an Earth Alliance civilian life vessel."

_Christ, _he thinks, and sits back as though he'd been struck. The civilian shuttle. _What am I really on trial for?_

"According to these files, such instances of direct disobedience were taken in conjunction with or accompanied by prisoner eight-four-six and former member of your squadron, Dearka Elsman."

_Prisoner. _He swallows the word. Past tense or present tense? The statement is too neutral to know, too vague to reveal if he's already been walked in front of a firing squad or tossed out of a depressurized hatch.

"Is it possible, Lieutenant Jule, that because of your mutual history of disobedience, former Lieutenant Elsman induced – or perhaps _swayed _you _–_ to defect and join the renegade fleet?"

He would scream, but he knows better than to be held in contempt of military court.

"I fought to help end the battle," he manages through clenched teeth.

"For whom?" The voice makes another show of audibly shuffling papers. "I see here your reactions to losing members of your squadron – and I count three – have resulted in grounds for severe reprimands, even sanctions. Surely," the voice continues, but now its tone is mockingly sympathetic, "such _poignant _concern for your unit would drive you to side with your former teammates. Or am I mistaken in suggesting that Athrun Zala was not the first to defect, and you were simply following his orders? How convenient that you did not get caught in the aftermath of the Gensis blast and your young _commander's _self-sacrifice?"

This time, he brings a hand to his face.

_Athrun._

* * *

_(day iii): death and all his friends_

He is in a temporary holding cell when the news comes through of what became of Justice.

He runs the full gamut of protests to convince the greencoat outside his cell to let him see Dearka. Criminals of war on trial for the same case are not kept together, of course – war has taught him that isolation breaks soldiers faster than torture. He tries pulling rank first, as though he were back on the _Vesalius _giving orders to a team that was never really his; then shouting, empty threats that reverberate off the metal walls and it is more the viciousness in his tone than the substance of his words that causes the guards recoil; until finally he can only plead, voice hoarse and defeated.

When finally they open his cell he asks who gave the order, but when the soldiers ignore him he doesn't press the issue. It's been hours since he's fallen silent, hours since he's last demanded what has become of frontline forces or since any news has trickled in. Le Creuset is dead, he knows this for certain: and yet he will not tolerate the same fate for Justice.

Ultimately he is still ZAFT, and so as they lead him down the hall his hands are unbound and no weapons are trained on him. He has been allowed to discard his pilot's suit, torn and bloodied, and given the neutral uniform of non-commissioned workers. Nevertheless the guards hover over him like overprotective escorts. _Prone to violence, _it must read in his file, so of course they must expect him to make a move. He wants to rail at them, if only for that.

When he sees Dearka it is on the other side of reinforced glass. ZAFT is many things, but he sees with relief that barbaric towards their prisoners of war is not one. Dearka has been fed and his wounds briefly attended to, though he still wears the bloodstained shirt and trousers that must have been beneath his pilot's suit. Every dark brown patch of dried blood recalls every injury from that last battle, like a timeline without words. He limps heavily on his left leg as he goes to sit on the other side of the glass.

But it's his expression rather than his visible wounds that cause Yzak to recoil, his heart in his mouth. He has never admitted that Dearka's cheerful nonchalance, his devil-may-care attitude in the face of death has, more than once, lifted them both out of the grasping reach of the inevitable mortality of every day. Even in the dim light he can see Dearka's face is a grim landscape without it, and in place of laughing at death he realizes they are now at its door.

"_No one goes into war believing they're the ones who're going to die," _Dearka had told him once. "_You just have to keep believing until you get out on the other side."_

"Dearka."

Even his name seems to tremble in the stale air.

Dearka studies him without expression. Then a flicker of a smile passes over the black pilot's face. "You look good."

Yzak feels relief come as a fury, and he would just as easily reach out and strike the other man as embrace him. With the glass between them, he does neither. "Does it hurt?" He regrets the question as soon as it leaves his lips.

"A little." Dearka smiles again, though his eyes do not. "They're not scars I was planning to keep, anyway."

"I should have left you in Buster."

The crushing feeling in his chest is subsiding, Yzak realizes, as they run through this little act. _You really made it, _he can hear beneath their banter. _All of you._

Then Dearka's face darkens, and Yzak knows what is coming next, so he speaks. "The commander is dead," he says, before the other pilot can ask.

"I know." Yzak opens his mouth, but before he can speak Dearka continues. "I've heard a lot. ZAFT is careful, but the other POWs…they saw what happened."

"Justice has -,"

Dearka's gaze stops Yzak cold. "Justice self-destructed, Yzak."

He feels the air leave his lungs all at once, and when he goes to inhale it feels like the vacuum of space.

"No," he manages finally, voice a breathless whisper. Then it rises. "No, just destroyed, that doesn't mean – he could've been in another suit -"

Dearka's face pinches in pain, though whether it's his wounds or something else is unclear. "You know these machines as well as I do," he says quietly. His face seems to recede even more into the darkness. "Justice needed a code to self-destruct. An internal code."

"But the last time - "

"The last time was an island on Earth," Dearka cuts him off, and now his voice is sharp, expression strained. "Justice set off a nuclear explosion to destroy Genesis. It's the only reason there still _is _an Earth."

He would be lying if he denied the moment – perhaps longer – in which he would without second thought have exchanged that equation. He remembers a gnawing self-doubted after the battle they'd fought in the lightning storm, when it seemed as though Aegis had gone down with Strike. His loathing for the other machine's pilot had consumed so much of him that he expected satisfaction, even peace of mind when Aegis self-destructed and blew the other weapon out of existence. Yet his only reward had been an unsettling emptiness, the nagging sensation that such revenge – and Athrun's life - had not been worth it.

Until they'd found the other pilot impossibly alive and impossibly in one piece. _You've got a lot of guts showing your face here again, Zala, _he'd yelled as they dragged Athrun off the Orb transport that returned him to their ship. Even as he'd said that he'd gripped the other man's arm and nearly refused to let go.

He shouldn't have let go.

So he reacts the only way he knows. His fist comes down hard on the metal table, startling the nearby soldiers so that one begins to draw his weapon. It's all he can muster, though, and the room falls still and silent again, the only movement the trembling in his shoulders. Dearka is extending a hand as if to touch him, but the glass warps the perspective between them, making him seem farther away than he really is. He realizes Dearka is reacting in the only way he too knows how: with non-reaction, mouth set in a thin line and face impassive. As if absorbing and dissipating the fury and the sorrow from Yzak, just as he'd always done.

When he speaks, his face is in his hands, but he knows Dearka can still hear him.

"Can it be that we're the only two left?"

* * *

_(day vi):_ _sweet child_

On the sixth day, he is allowed to see his mother.

He does not ask what higher power has sanctioned the visit. Part of him doesn't want to know, because he's well aware that prisoners of war are often conceded one last encounter with their loved ones before execution. _My execution, or hers? _he wonders numbly as they lead him down the empty corridors.

He cannot recall the last time ZAFT executed a political prisoner, but neither can he recall the last time humanity fought in such a war.

When they arrive, she is a shadow at the back of the cell. She must catch a glimpse of him through the small window, because when she stands up it is too fast, too abrupt and she staggers, reaching a hand to the cold metal wall for support. He turns to the guards, face twisted in fury. They hesitate, but only momentarily, and then the steel doors are sliding apart with a quiet _hiss _and she is stumbling into his arms. When they embrace he feels his heart sink – she's so frail she barely seems to exist. He recalls the last time they met, aboard the Genesis control station, before he launched Duel for the last time.

"_We're so close," _she'd said then_. "Hang on, just a while longer."_

So close to what? Firing on Earth? Eliminating all Naturals? The woman in his arms now seems incapable of such hate.

"Mother."

When she looks at him she is beyond exhaustion. He'd already seen it, last time: her countenance a bit quieter, powerful voice hushed. She was not the whirlwind of political force and conviction who helped build Zala's faction, nor the firm but fiercely protective mother he'd grown up with, who taught him how to stand straight and salute properly. That woman had so much life it seemed too much for her small frame. Now her shoulders bowed, defeated, as though all that weight had finally caught up with her.

"Yzak." He is so used to have his name pronounced like an order to attention that when she speaks, he is struck by the emotion contained in the sound itself. She brings a hand up to his face, as if to be certain it's him. Beneath the metallic smell of the cell is that of the home where she raised him, fashioned him as a capable soldier and resolutely loyal human being. And yet now as he stands before her he wavers, unsure of what she expects of him, unsure of his own precarious position.

The warmth of her hand brings him back, if only momentarily, to the house on Martius One. Most of the colony had long been a wasteland of arms manufacturing, and yet the home she had built was glossy granite and noble grey stone, mantles and arches covered in ornate wooden scrollwork – how rare it was to see real wood on a colony – nestled in lush gardens. For all he knew as a child it might have been a living entity itself, the only natural organism on a colony that seemed entirely made of iron and steel. He remembers the cherry blossoms of spring, carpets of lush pink petals and curvaceous tulips in complimentary colours. Ecology was not a hard a fast rule there, but more a creative exploit. Bleeding hearts seemed to trickle from everywhere like liquid pearls; irises, severe and almost melancholy grew alongside the indiscriminately colourful explosions of birds of paradise. He would walk through the gardens and things would brush his face softly, organisms whose names he would never know but whose brilliance he could not forget. He would later come to view nebulas as such galactic gardens.

As he looks at her now he sees the blue and white orchids that were her favourite, pale and silvery confections with delicate cerulean swirls. These were the hardest to upkeep, she'd told him once. Obstinate and fragile, once you lost one, it was probably gone for good. She tended to them herself, though she could have easily had an army of specialists at her disposal. It was the furthest things she did from wage war, perhaps even more so than raise a son.

"The war is over," he says, as if she does not already know this.

She smiles as him sadly, as though an adult indulging a child's imagination. Then a shadow passes over her face, and for a moment she seems much older than she is.

"Has the trial ended?"

"No," he shakes his head. "But they will reconvene for a ruling within a fortnight. I didn't…" He falters, fighting for his words. "I didn't expect it to be this fast."

He has only ever known her to have two voices: the commanding pitch of his mother the Supreme Councilwoman, and the steady but strong temperance of his mother herself, as though they were two different people. When she speaks now, it is as the former. "We have the wreckage of years of war to sift through. We do not have the luxury of long, drawn out judgement." She laughs softly. "But nor do we have the advantage of careful self-reflexivity, and above all else, time."

He glances inside the cell. A political prisoner's cell, not a soldier's. Small traces of humanity here and there. He wants to ask _And you? _but fears the question as much as he does the answer. Political prisoners are kept as examples, he reminds himself. The politicians of the past are paraded in front of the masses as grim reminders, and to better contrast those of the present. They are not executed in cold bold. _She is not a war criminal,_ he thinks, as though the thought should solidify and make it so – yet he cannot help but wonder if her orders have killed as many people as his weapons.

"I'm on trial for the civilian shuttle," he blurts, unable to contain the current of helplessness that punctuates his voice.

That seems to make her stop, and when she speaks again it is with the latter voice: as his mother. "I am sorry," she says quietly, as if to fill the space. Subtly he hears hints of the Martius One colony accent permeate her words, with soft rolling _r'_s and thick _o's_. Abruptly he remembers how she had nearly beaten that accent out of him. _Speak like an educated neutral if you want to be taken seriously,_ she once said. _And if you don't, then speak like a provincial. _Here and now, he realizes, it no longer matters.

"But you cannot carry that burden for ever."

_Forever won't be long, _a quiet voice in his mind says, _if I am found guilty. _

"And the other pilot? The one who fought for the renegades?"

He blinks. She means Dearka, of course. "I don't know. I saw him in holding, a few days ago, but since then…" He shakes his head. _Don't, _he begs himself, but he has always been at the mercy of reality.

_Can it be that I am the only one left?_

She brings both hands to his face as he blinks, her face blurring behind the emotion that makes his throat catch and his eyes hot.

"Hush," she says, as though to a child again. "There is still time." She draws him further back into the cell, out of earshot of the guards, and when she turns to face him again there is a firm resolution in her features. For a moment she is herself again. She takes his hands in hers.

"Listen to me. You will return for the sentencing. Before that, something will come to light." Her eyes flicker, Machiavellian cunning in her gaze. "A file. Evidence will be presented. It will be made clear to the Council that both you and your teammates were under external coercion, and are not directly responsible for your actions. You will be spoken for."

He looks at her in bewilderment. "What are you talking about?" _No such evidence exists, _he thinks – _Dearka and I acted of our own accord. _

"You have sacrificed too much, survived too much not to see the other side of this war. There are people in power who understand this. They know you will be needed again, and soon."

He recoils. It sounds unmistakably as though she is asking him to go back to war.

"The files will force them to reconsider the desertion charges. And they will be untraceable." She brushes a strand of his hair away from his face and smiles at him sadly. "I will make sure of that."

Whether he misses her last statement in his confusion or purposefully forces himself to let it go, he will never know. "But the civilian ship…"

When she looks up, he is struck by the unnerving sentiment of his own eyes gazing back at him.

"Sweet child. Only you can forgive yourself for that."

Dearka had touched his face too, so briefly, when he'd come to learn of the mistake.

He runs a hand over his face brusquely now, as if to clear something away. "I don't understand. This doesn't –"

"Eventually," she continues, cutting him off. "The charges will be dropped. It will fall to the three of you to decide for whom – and how – you will fight. What home you will return to, once you have taken off."

_Three of you?_

"Mother, the others are – Athrun is -,"

She looks at him sharply, and he shuts his mouth. Then she softens. "When we realized he was still alive, we knew the two of you would have to live, too. You will need each other. I can only hope…" She speaks so softly now that he can barely hear her. "I can only do this for you."

It begins to dawn on him, very slowly, what she has done.

"Find them, once the trials are over. You will need them both. One to help lead, and the other to lean on." She looks at him with clear, sharp eyes, and once again he sees the reflection of his own searching gaze. "You are not so different, you and Zala's son. You were both born to fight."

"Mother." Any other time she might have scolded him for the pleading in his voice.

She smiles, the ferocity in her words and gestures gone, and she is his mother again, too burdened by time, too battered by war. She steps back, and as he tries to approach her again the guards obstruct him. He hears one of them punch a code into the wall panel.

"I knew you would live," she says as the steel doors slide closed with a _hiss. _

She is found dead the next day.

* * *

_(day viii): your sins into me_

"Elsman, Dearka. Identification E-D-K-one-zero-one-eight-three-nine-five, Februarius One, Red."

He is at the very back of the cavernous room, and even with a Coordinator's genetically perfect eyesight, he sees Dearka as only a bright outline in the distance. The blonde pilot is seated in the same isolated, brightly lit pulpit of guilt in what feels like the center of the room, heavy shadows descending around him. But while Yzak had received some mocking version of a trial, some opportunity, if only briefly, to defend and explain his actions, Dearka sits as though a man with a noose already around his neck and a patient resignation while he waits for the executioner to open the floor beneath him.

It has been three days since he's seen his mother. Two since they informed him of her death. Milliseconds since he'd last thought of her. It seemed as though he couldn't _not – _couldn't picture anything except her death, her frail form in his arms, her last effort to save the son she sent to die in war.

_And if she failed? _Since that time they have not released him from holding. He has not seen this bleak chamber of judgement since the day he was dragged in front of a faceless jury only to falter when they accused him taking civilian life that was not his to take. It had ended quickly – he had no defense for his actions. _A mistake, _he wanted desperately to plead. _I was wrong. _But he had remained silent instead, listening to the faceless voice explain with derisive thoughtfulness that lives, however mistakenly taken, could not be restituted. The verdict, as he understood it, was that PLANT's Moderate leadership, however provisional, was ready to make an example of its more radical factions and outright traitors. It was almost medieval. He and Dearka would be the crowning jewels of that effort, he knew. The silver and gold of PLANT's victory to erase any doubt or wavering support for its policies.

Death is a superb way to make an example of something, he thinks calmly.

From the darkness he can vaguely make out where the same jeering voice is coming from. It's ready to pass judgement, he hears – there's an impatience there that demands some twisted form of justice, some call to arms as though the young man seated before them is a monster and not a solider they themselves trained. He wants to run into the middle of the room, stand between the darkness and Dearka and tear them apart, men who sat in their bomb shelters while everyone – _Rusty, Miguel, Nicol – _died around them.

_Not everyone. _At the back of his mind he hears his mother's voice again. _Zala's son. _Athrun. Alive. Impossibly, again. _Bastard always did fuck around with us like that, _he thinks, and is almost giddy with the thought that there will still be one of _them_ - his unit, his team, his most intimate companions – left.

"Do you deny these actions?"

Abruptly he lets himself be snapped back into the present, realizing he has missed the proceedings. Dearka's voice echoes at the other end of the chamber.

"No."

He thinks back to his Earth history. _How did they execute revolutionaries again? Guillotines?_ He pictures one in his mind's eye, a medieval tool as crude as the law proceeding over them now.

"Do you deny surrendering to an Earth Alliance battleship?"

"No."

"Do you deny deploying your mobile weapon in service of that same battleship and thereafter abandoning your post as a soldier of ZAFT?"

"I -,"

"Deputy Chairman."

He feels the ripple of apprehension as a new voice enters the space. Dignitaries shift in their seat, and the confusion is palpable. Without warning a second figure appears next to where he has identified the disembodied leader of the proceedings.

Someone somewhere makes an offended sound. "Vice Chairman -,"

When the new figure speaks, his voice seems to warm the stale air around them. "Chairman, now, please." The smile is audible under liquid honey tones.

The ripple of hushed murmurs turns into a wave. Dearka remains seated at the center of the room, seemingly forgotten in the quiet commotion. Yzak has the momentary impulse to whisk him out of the room, yet part of him inexplicably needs to know who the man with the golden voice is.

From the figure's direction comes a soft blue glow. Someone has activated a holoreader, and the artificial blue light illuminates for the first time the faces of the Council jury. _Memorize them, _he tells himself quickly. Too many times he's gone without seeing his enemy's face.

Then the newcomer moves out of the soft blue light and towards the center of the room, descending the small steps slowly and with purpose, his footsteps echoing off the cathedral-like walls. He strides – no, he seems to glide, Yzak observes – to a podium shrouded in darkness not far from Dearka. He pauses, and suddenly the light above the podium bursts into life, illuminating the man as though from a spotlight above. He seems familiar, but Yzak cannot place the long, glossy black hair and proud, aquiline features. Even at a distance, his eyes are piercing – a liquid amber, warm and golden like his voice. Like cat's eyes they have a subtle inner illumination, a tell-tale Coordinator modification. Yzak feels a flicker of familiarity: this man is perhaps someone he has seen before, in the background - not a Council member, but a high-ranking official of some kind. Or perhaps it is the man's immediate charisma that makes him seem familiar, the disarmingly personal way he address a room full of estranged old men who have nothing to lose by making an example of the youth they sent to fight their war.

An indignant voice emerges from the darkness. "Vice Chairman Dullindal, we are in the middle of -,"

The tall man holds up a hand. The gesture is remarkably graceful and terribly powerful. Years of military training make Yzak sit taller, lean a little more forward. The other voice falls silent, as though the simple wave of a hand might have dissipated it.

When the man speaks, his liquid voice pours over the room. "I regret to interrupt your proceedings like this, valued Council members, but as Chairman it is my duty to inform you of as of yet unforeseen information directly pertaining to this case." He is painfully formal, but Yzak begins to understand how the formality of his language and softness of his voice place the listener at his mercy. "As you may be aware, Deputy Chairman, I have brought forth new evidence in this case that, in light of these new proceedings, I believe brings both cases to a close. Or am I wrong to suggest you are ready to deliver a verdict today?"

The bemused silence is finally interrupted by the contemptuous voice. "This is absurd -,"

"As Chairman," the man interrupts, and this time it is the power in his voice that quashes any protest, "I am providing you with enough evidence _and enough authority _to formally dismiss this case." When he smiles his eyes are both intimately warm and frighteningly calculating. "Both pilots are to be placed in ZAFT Special Forces custody awaiting my orders."

A steady, rising murmur from the back of the room. _What proof? _They demand.

"In consulting the files brought forward by an internal source, Lieutenants Jule and Elsman have been found to have been acting under the direct orders of their division commander." Yzak's eyes widen_. _"Commander Le Creuset's actions at the end of the Battle of Jachin Due reflect those of a soldier no longer in control of his faculties. Stealing the Providence machine, infiltrating the Earth Alliance and leaking knowledge to OMNI forces, among other things." A flicker of a smile. "For such vehement accusations of desertion, these young pilots were only following the misguided orders of their commander."

"These are not pilots!" The control is beginning to slip from the disembodied voice. "These are criminals of war!"

The Chairman, if that is indeed who he is, glances briefly at Dearka and then back into the gloom. For a moment Yzak swears he find his gaze in the darkness.

"If the adults who started this war send their youth to fight it, and then label the mistakes of those young soldiers as criminal acts that warrant death, who is left to lead the PLANT of tomorrow? Who will build the colonies of peace instead of the machines of war? The agony of this young generation…" His gaze moves around the room, and Yzak knows he is in complete mastery of his audience. "It is to their experience we should look, and their forgiveness we should ask in building the future."

With a jolt, he realizes this is it. _This is the evidence she was talking about. _

"As Chairman of the Supreme Council of PLANT, I hereby dissolve the provisional Council set in place at the end of the Battle of Jachin Due and reinstate Supreme Council command of both the colonies and ZAFT military forces. This case and the accused are to be placed directly under my jurisdiction."

The guillotine descending in Yzak's mind suddenly stops, halfway through its deadly trajectory.

* * *

(day xiii): _silver and silent_

On the thirteenth day, they release his mother's body to him.

He buries her on Aprilius One, in a plot of land covered in the same wild gardens of the Martius One house. He won't take her back there, though – her place was here, he decides. But he does not deny that he finds it hard to imagine returning to Martius One. Even for her.

It's a small affair. She is his only living relative, and she lost allies at the end of the war. Like Patrick Zala, the zeal for victory pushed her forward even as she left the others behind in moral doubt. Still, some attend, paying their respects to a woman who was if nothing else a brilliant politician.

If Dearka attends the service, he does not see him.

The Chairman is there, a solemn but imposing figure in his dark coat. Where Patrick Zala stood stiffly and commanded forcefully, Dullindal glides effortlessly and persuades with his golden voice. A different leader for a different PLANT, Yzak wants to believe. He feels humbled, owing this man his life.

As they lower the casket into the colony soil, the Chairman approaches him.

"You fought bravely."

Yzak keeps his eyes on the casket as it descends. "Do you say that to every veteran?"

Dullindal smiles softly. "Only those who live."

"Chairman." Yzak flinches, then instinctively salutes. "I'm sorry. It was not my place to -,"

"It's fine," the other man cuts him off. He watches the casket land softly at the bottom of the hole, face expressionless.

"She thought of this," he says finally. "That if the Zala faction was overturned, ZAFT's own would be tried for crimes against humanity. That's when she began to assemble the files."

Yzak almost laughs. "A failsafe to keep me alive, even as she sent me into war a thousand times." He shakes his head. "She was always a good politician."

"And your squad?" the Chairman asks. "Are they too not alive because of her?"

Instinctively he looks around again, as though expecting Dearka to have appeared. He hasn't.

"Athrun hasn't -,"

"Returned to ZAFT? Perhaps because his father nearly led a successful genocide." The Chairman's face seems to darken momentarily. "Give him time. Orb will shelter him until then."

"Time?"

When the Chairman looks at him, his gaze is severe. "Before he is needed again. All of you will be." Then he looks up, where the colony's artificial sky continues to move slowly into the warm purple of dusk.

The thought of fighting again makes Yzak physically sick.

"I know." The Chairman puts a hand on his shoulder. The gesture seems oddly out of place. "But she asked you to keep living. She asked you not to die. What is to live but to fight?"

Yzak opens his left hand. Her orchid blossoms, the silvery-blue petals like blown glass; he'd had them brought in from Martius One. The roots of this one were dying, so he'd removed the opened flowers. The petals felt limp and papery between his fingers. _Dead if I had left them, dead when I picked them._ He knew something about borrowed time.

When he opens his palm he tips it gently down, so that the bulbs fall in a delicate cascade towards the casket, like the wisps of burnt paper that rain down after fireworks. It reminds him of the pieces of the civilian shuttle, catching fire as they descended like sparks over the planet's blue surface. Like the breath that escaped his lungs when he crumpled, much later, recognizing what he'd done.

He senses the Chairman leave quietly as the dirt is shovelled back into the hole, soil seeming to consume the casket. He watches the silver and blue orchids disappear beneath the black earth.

The next day, he re-enlists.

* * *

_(day ccclxxviii): give it time, my love_

When he knocks on Dearka's door, it has been nearly a year.

He almost doesn't expect the other man to answer. He knows it's the right place – the sprawling building atop the highest hill in Februarius City. They used to come here on leave, retreat for weeks at a time atop the vast plateau, overlooking the hazy city in the distance below, like children retreating into a secret hideaway. Dearka used to tell him that the palatial home only seemed alive when the Le Creuset team was there. They were so green, then, he remembers: gathered in the ornate rooms, strewn over chairs and the soft double beds, faces illuminated by lamplight as they exchanged quick gestures and strident laughter. Setting boundaries, he realizes now, between the unquestioning reality of war and the dreamlike intimacy of friendship. Not quite adults yet far beyond children, he recalls his inability to pin down the nature of their relationship, the nature of their existence. Rusty's fiery voice, Miguel's rousing character, Nicol's kind eyes. These are not _teammates, _he would come to realize. Athrun's hushed voice and pensive gaze. These are not _friends. _Dearka's easy laugh, and the way he would relax his arm by Yzak's side. _These are the people I would die for. _

When the door opens before him, it could almost be one of those nights again.

They stand looking at each other for a few moments, as if confirming the other was really there, as though waiting for the moment to solidify into reality.

"Yzak."

He lets his eyes rove other the other man, drinking in his physical presence, searching for the familiar and the unknown. Dearka hasn't changed much, he sees: he's perhaps a little taller, his blonde hair curling a little longer down the nape of his neck. The planes of his face are the same, though, violet eyes beneath heavy eyelids, like half-moons.

There is equanimity in his features, and without speaking he moves aside, the universal sign for _come in. _Yzak does, tentatively stepping over the threshold of the door and quietly wishing it were the threshold of time, too. The palatial estate is darker than he remembers, lifeless and empty. Dearka closes the door behind him, and wordlessly the blonde pilot leads him towards the back of the long, ornate hall. He catches glimpses of the frames on the wall, ghostly faces from another time and place seeming to look right through him.

With a hushed sound the glass doors slide open, and cool air rushes to embrace them as they emerge onto the expansive balcony, the city lights glittering like so many stars below. He follows Dearka to the edge of the balcony and they lean over the ornate stone balustrade. The effect is dizzying: he feels as though he is in Duel again, nothing but air between he and the swallowing blackness of space and giddying brightness of stars.

They are so motionless in the silence that when Dearka finally speaks, it seems to stir the air around them.

"I'm sorry. About her."

There are things he wants to say, but instead he shrugs, his lips pressed together in a thin line.

"I was there," Dearka continues. "At the service. I couldn't –." He shakes his head. "I'm sorry. It was too raw, too soon."

Yzak lets his eyes remain hidden behind the curtain of his hair. Below them, the city lights twinkle mournfully.

"Where are you stationed?"

He doesn't ask _did you go back_. Dearka knows too well he would have sewn the badge of ZAFT over his heart again eventually.

"A peacekeeping force in orbit around Junius Seven. A flagship and an accompanying destroyer." The irony is not lost on him.

"You were promoted." It's a statement, not a question.

He holds up his arms, turning the bottoms of his wrists to face upwards. He tries not to layer the gesture with meaning. "Commander," he says, showing Dearka the white and gold cufflinks of his shirt, markers of his post even as he moves through the world in civilian garb. He feels like an imposter in these clothes. He hasn't felt like a civilian since he donned his first red suit.

Dearka's expression is unreadable. "You were always suited to it," he says finally.

He shakes his head. "No," he says firmly. "Not until…not until after."

When Dearka speaks, it is without looking at him. "Did she ask you to?"

He grips the balustrade a little harder, lowering his head so his silver sheen of hair catches the moonlight, pale and brilliant like the icy tail of a comet, inherited from his mother's whimsical genetic tinkering. He has been amongst Naturals, and the artificiality of it sets him apart, marks him as one of_ them,_ like a branding, a bull's eye painted on the back of his head. Like Dearka's purple eyes, a naturalized tell-tale Coordinator feature, long since slipped into the shared gene pool. Even in their non-action they cannot escape who they are.

"She did," he says finally. "And so did the Chairman, the day he saved our lives."

Dearka turns to face him fully now, and there is a simmering anger beneath his calm features.

"Is that what you're here for, then? Because Dullindal sent you to _recruit _me?"

He flinches. "No," he says quickly. "No. I'm not here for him." He senses the situation begin to slip from his grasp.

"Then what do you want?"

The roughness in Dearka's voice startles him, and he fumbles for his words. "No, I – I need -" He stops himself mid-sentence. _What? For you to stand next to me while I give the orders? For you to be my moral compass? _He cringes at the selfishness of it.

"I need you to fight with me again."

This time Dearka lets the anger show on his face, twisting his pleasant features. He turns away brusquely, and Yzak sees the knuckles on his left hand grow white from gripping the banister.

"To fight? For what? _The sake of ZAFT?" _He spits the last sentence. "For a military complex that sent its children to war, and was ready to execute them after? God forbid soldiers grow up who know war well enough to try and prevent it." He shakes his head. "I'm done signing my life over. I'll die on my own terms."

"Dearka -,"

"You shouldn't have come."

Yzak feels the helplessness in his chest turn to fury. He grabs the other man by the shoulder, spins him around so they are facing each other. "_Don't run."_

Dearka doesn't struggle from the grip. Their eyes meet. "Would you have said that to Athrun?"

Yzak recoils, stricken as much by Dearka's voice as by Athrun's name. He drops his hand and his eyes to the floor, as though looking for an answer. There is much he would say to Athrun, he recognizes, and for a moment he thinks it's perhaps for the best the other pilot has slipped quietly outside the shadow of war. Finally he glances up.

"Yes," he says, his voice flat. "What use are we alive if we don't stop the world from going to hell?"

Dearka falters, and Yzak sees a flicker of doubt pass over his face. The artificial moon of the colony hangs dimly above them, a quiet observer. It's a different moon from that one – the real moon – that hung above a desert of Earth, almost two years ago, when they'd fallen from space. He remembers buckling into Dearka's arms, fury dissipating into helpless grief when he'd learned of the civilian shuttle.

"_I thought – I thought they were -,"_

"_Enough," _Dearka had said gently, in the way he'd always pleaded so reasonably, so patiently with the other man's temper. _"There'll be time for that, later._" Had he meant mourning or judgement? Yzak could not recall. _"Right now, we still need to stop the rest of the world from going to hell."_

Presently Dearka looks away, his features lost in shadow. "Fighting will not bring them back."

"No," Yzak acquiesces. "But it's all I can do." He spreads his hands wide, and his time the gesture is layered in meaning – helplessness, offering, presence. "This is what I am, Dearka." In his mind's eye there is his mother, pinning his first service medal to his uniform. "You know that. It's the only thing I've ever known."

Dearka's expression flits between compassion and something close to pity. "I know. But I can't fight for them anymore. All this-," He waves his hand, motioning to the colony's night sky and the cityscape below them. "I can't feign to protect it, only to be a part of its destruction. ZAFT claimed to protect its colonies, to be their shield and fight for them. Yet our greatest historical tragedy, or greatest loss of life is still Junius Seven. Two million civilians, Yzak. Two million innocent lives. Where was ZAFT, then?"

"A different time," Yzak answers, but he can hear the uncertainty in his voice.

Dearka opens his mouth to continue but pauses, and suddenly his expression softens, his features settling back into place. "I'm a traitor," he says, and the word sounds blunt and flat on his voice, like a strike from the back of one's hand. "You have a ship, a team under your command. You have a seat on the Council waiting for you after this. I don't have that." He shrugs helplessly, the gesture infinitely vulnerable. "I don't want that."

Instinctively Yzak reaches out a hand, the same way he did that night in the desert, the sorrow of a hundred lives and deaths weighing on his chest.

"Then if not for ZAFT, for me."

Dearka looks at him, hand outstretched, paused in midair. He is conscious of how wretched he must seem, how selfish his words.

"I can't do this without you."

He remembers strong arms around him that night, infinitely sorrowful patience. A part of his humanity he had suddenly become very aware of losing. As though grasping for that memory, he reaches his hand further towards the other man, towards his infinitely patient face.

"Please. What I did…" He trails off. "I don't want…I don't ever want to be that again."

His hand hovers impossibly close, as though the inches between the surfaces of their skin were breathing, speaking to each other in that limitless gap.

"I never want to kill like that again."

He wants it to be as it was, he realizes suddenly. It's why he's come back here, to find Dearka in this place – the palace they left as children and returned as adults, the ghostly spaces where the echoes of their long dead comrades still chime. He is reaching for the past as much as he reaches for Dearka now, a past when the four – three, now – of them fought for each other and without question. Yet he cannot be the person he was then, cannot kill with the same impunity.

But nor can he stand back and do nothing.

_Sweet child. Only you can forgive yourself for that. _

Finally, skin touches skin. Finally, the infinite gap between them begins to close, and endlessness begins to end.

As Duel clung to a dying Buster at the end of the war, so Dearka lifts him up now and for all he cares the blonde pilot could refuse him, leave him tomorrow and it wouldn't matter as long as he held on here and now.

Warm fingertips trace the line on his face where his scar once was, now long gone. They ghost around the edge of his lips.

"I don't want to be the only one left."

There is no answer. Only the quiet observation of the artificial moon and the mournful lights below.

Nevertheless, he does answer, Yzak knows: answers in his presence, his infinite patience. Answers in small gestures, gentle touches. Answers in permissions and forgiveness.

* * *

_(epilogue): to fall down at your door_

As Junius Seven plunges towards Earth, they meet again on the battlefield. _Of course, _he thinks. _Where else?_

"_Stop giving orders, you goddamn civilian!"_

Athrun's audible sigh over the comm, so hauntingly familiar, so perfectly in place.

"_You haven't changed, Yzak."_

"_Neither have you."_

Above the background interference, a quiet chuckle from Dearka.

_One to help you lead, _his mother had said. _And one to lean on. _

At least, he thinks, being the only three left alive means they're alive.

* * *

_end._


End file.
